Serving in the military is considered one of the most stressful occupations; therefore, because of the potential mitigation effect resilience has against stressors, it has often been incorporated as a component in predeployment programmes for soldiers. Consequently, assessing, facilitating and sustaining resilience is of particular importance in military environments. The Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale (BSRS) has been utilised within the South African Navy (SAN) environment, where it yielded promising results as a measure of resilience. The aim of this article is to investigate the psychometric properties of the BSRS and the applicability thereof to the South African Army (SA Army). The study utilised a sample of SA Army soldiers (
The Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale (BSRS) (Van Wijk & Martin,
Resilience has often been described and defined in terms of the ability to bounce back or thrive and withstand the effects of stressful events (Connor & Davidson,
The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) define resilience as the capacity of a soldier to recover quickly, resist and possibly even thrive in the face of direct and indirect traumatic events and adverse situations in garrison, training and operational environments (Hellewell & Cernak,
The increased focus on performance has led to concepts such as hardiness and resilience becoming increasingly important in the development of a high-performing soldier (Krueckel et al.,
Evaluating mood states could provide an indication of psychological distress (Van Wijk et al.,
Similar to the SAN deployments that were investigated by Van Wijk and Martin (
Serving in the military is considered one of the most stressful occupations (De Visser et al.,
Resilience development has been incorporated as part of a predeployment programme for soldiers because of the potential mitigation effect it has for certain stressors associated with health and performance outcomes (Bartone et al.,
The increased focus in the military environment on performance-related constructs such as hardiness and resilience (Krueckel et al.,
The four fitness domains of the BSRS stem from the United States Air Force definitions of the respective fitness domains (Air Force Instruction,
A total of 418 SA Army soldiers participated in the study, with the majority of the sample categorised as infantry soldiers and the remaining participants functioning in different support capacities, such as signallers, engineers and military police. Convenience sampling was adopted in order to obtain the largest possible number of participants.
Sociodemographic characteristics of participants.
Sociodemographics | % | |
---|---|---|
Male | 260 | 62 |
Female | 139 | 33 |
Missing | 19 | 5 |
20–29 | 104 | 25 |
30–39 | 180 | 43 |
40–49 | 24 | 6 |
50 and above | 67 | 16 |
Missing | 43 | 10 |
Private or equivalent | 203 | 49 |
Noncommissioned officers | 162 | 39 |
Warrant officer (all classes) | 5 | 1 |
Officers | 14 | 3 |
Missing | 34 | 8 |
Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Swati) | 108 | 26 |
Sotho (Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho and Tswana) | 165 | 39 |
Tsonga | 54 | 13 |
Venda | 29 | 7 |
Afrikaans | 26 | 6 |
English | 8 | 2 |
Missing or other | 28 | 7 |
The Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale BSRS (Van Wijk & Martin,
The BSRS has been utilised locally within the SAN environment and yielded satisfactory psychometric properties, with alpha coefficients ranging from 0.745 to 0.892 for the respective subscales (Van Wijk & Martin,
The Dispositional Resilience Scale – II (DRS-II) (Sinclair et al.,
The Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS) (Terry et al.,
The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) was developed to measure two specific aspects related to emotion control: reappraisal and suppression (Gross & John,
The researcher collected most of the data by visiting respective military units across the country and administering the measurements described here. Registered psychologists staffed in the SANDF assisted the researcher with data collection when practical constraints limited accessibility. Potential participants were informed through the official command channels of the arranged dates for data collection. This procedure was followed to ensure the maximum number of available participants. All participants were briefed about the aim of the study and the voluntary nature of participation, and written consent was also obtained before commencing with the data collection.
Data were screened for accuracy, outliers, missing values and normality (Hair et al.,
A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), using structural equation modelling (SEM) with maximum likelihood estimation of the BSRS four-factor model in line with the originally developed structure, was conducted to determine model fit on the sample.
In terms of goodness-of-fit indicators for the models, the following measures (
Goodness-of-fit indicators for the models.
Indicator | Interpretation guideline |
---|---|
Chi-square test statistic | Significant chi-square ( |
Comparative fit index (CFI) | Values ≥ 0.95 indicate good fit |
Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) | Values < 0.06 indicate good fit yet values < 0.08 may also indicate acceptable fit |
Goodness-of-fit index (GFI) | Values ≥ 0.90 indicate good fit |
Standardised root mean square residual (SRMR) | Values < 0.08 indicate acceptable fit |
Reliability estimates (Cronbach’s alpha coefficients) were computed in order to evaluate internal consistency of the instrument. Coefficients > 0.6 are generally regarded as acceptable (Field,
Construct validity was also assessed utilising bivariate correlations with the results from the BSRS, DRS-II, BRUMS and ERQ scores. Bivariate correlations were conducted only on available data where participants completed every question across all the instruments (
The study received approval from the Faculty of Humanities Postgraduate Research Ethics Committee of the University of Pretoria (reference number: HUM20190107). Approval for submission and publication of this article has been provided by Defence Intelligence (reference number: DI/DDS/R/3/7). Written informed consent was also obtained from the participants.
Tests of univariate normality were conducted in order to investigate the distribution of the data. Hair et al. (
Descriptive statistics for the BSRS total fitness score as well as respective scales are indicated in
Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale descriptive statistics.
Instrument | Subscale and total | Mean | Mean SAN |
Median | Standard deviation | Standard deviation SAN |
Minimum | Maximum | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BSRS | Mental | 418 | 10.9 | 10.4 | 12 | 1.7 | 1.6 | 0 | 12 |
Physical | 418 | 9.2 | 8.8 | 9 | 2.5 | 2.2 | 0 | 12 | |
Social | 418 | 9.0 | 9.0 | 10 | 3.0 | 2.7 | 0 | 12 | |
Spiritual | 418 | 9.7 | 10.1 | 10 | 2.8 | 2.1 | 0 | 12 | |
Total fitness | 418 | 38.8 | 38.3 | 40 | 7.8 | 6.4 | 0 | 48 |
BSRS, Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale; SAN, South African Navy.
, Van Wijk and Martin (
Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using SEM with maximum likelihood estimation in line with the originally developed structure. An item factor loading indicates the strength of relationship between the item and the factor. All items loaded significantly on the respective factors (≥ 0.4) (Field,
In terms of the overall fit of the model, the chi-square statistic was found to be statistically significant with
Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale factor structure.
Pertaining to this study, the BSRS total fitness scale produced a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.886. Furthermore, all the fitness subscales (mental = 0.733; physical = 0.819; social = 0.862; spiritual = 0.875) were found to have good internal consistency and reliability (> 0.6) (Field,
Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale reliability estimates – Cronbach’s alpha coefficients.
Instrument | Subscale and total | SA Army | SAN |
---|---|---|---|
BSRS | Mental | 0.733 | 0.745 |
Physical | 0.819 | 0.851 | |
Social | 0.862 | 0.873 | |
Spiritual | 0.875 | 0.892 | |
Total fitness | 0.886 | 0.874 |
BSRS, Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale; SA, South Africa; SAN, South African Navy.
, Van Wijk and Martin (
Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale construct validity coefficients and Cronbach’s alphas.
BSRS | ERQ |
BRUMS |
DRS-II |
||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Reappraisal | Suppression | TMD score | Positive hardiness | Negative hardiness | |
Total fitness | 0.15 |
−0.09 | −0.35 |
0.36 |
−0.28 |
Mental fitness | 0.16 |
−0.08 | −0.36 |
0.41 |
−0.29 |
Physical fitness | −0.05 | −0.05 | −0.32 |
0.06 | −0.18 |
Social fitness | 0.10 | −0.13 |
−0.25 |
0.27 |
−0.28 |
Spiritual fitness | 0.28 |
−0.03 | −0.21 |
0.41 |
−0.14 |
Cronbach’s alpha | 0.767 | 0.700 | 0.886 | 0.713 | 0.639 |
BSRS, Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale; ERQ, emotion regulation questionnaire; BRUMS, Brunel Mood Scale; DRS-II, Dispositional Resilience Scale – II; TMD, total mood distress.
, Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
, Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Correlations between the BSRS first- and second-order factors were all significant, in accordance with the theoretical model as depicted in
A comparison of correlations between the BSRS scales and the BRUMS-TMD score pertaining to the SA Army and SAN samples indicated a similar trend, although in some cases the SA Army sample correlations were not as strong compared with the SAN sample (
Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale and Brunel Mood Scale correlations: South African Navy
BSRS subscale and total | BRUMS-TMD SA Army | BRUMS-TMD SAN |
---|---|---|
Mental | −0.36 | −0.52 |
Physical | −0.32 | −0.47 |
Social | −0.25 | −0.26 |
Spiritual | −0.21 | −0.26 |
Total fitness score | −0.35 | −0.48 |
BSRS, Brief Sailor Resiliency Scale; BRUMS, Brunel Mood Scale; TMD, total mood distress; SA, South Africa; SAN, South African Navy.
, Van Wijk and Martin (
The findings of the study provide preliminary validation results for the utilisation of the BSRS in the SA Army. Furthermore, the findings provide confirmatory validation of the originally developed factor structure along with the internal reliability of the scales (Bowen et al.,
Soldiers deployed to dangerous, volatile environments confront numerous operational and performance stressors, and resilience has been established as a buffer for mitigating the stress induced by modern military operations and challenges unrelated to combat (Kamphuis et al.,
Application of the BSRS in the SANDF to assess individual resilience, coupled with appropriate interventions (if needed), could address areas of concern in a predeployment phase and be combined with a mid-deployment assessment as part of continuous monitoring, along with a post-deployment assessment in order to identify any domains for further intervention. The multifactorial nature of military stress (Beckner et al.,
The BSRS addresses the unique reported areas of stress a deployed SANDF soldier might experience. Major stressor themes related to deployment environments and interpersonal or family relations (Semmelink et al.,
As emotional regulation ability is known to influence mood and resilience, an integrative approach for resilience enhancement training is warranted (Troy & Mauss,
As the BSRS displayed good psychometric properties, further research is needed on the use of the BSRS as a screening instrument in conjunction with relevant interventions and evaluation of interventions.
Although the BSRS displayed adequate psychometric properties and provides a brief and accurate evaluation of individual resilience in terms of four different facets of resilience, the researcher is of the opinion that one should apply caution when interpreting the result of the social scale. Items from the social scale pertain to family, unit or workplace members and friends, thus providing a general indication of social domain fitness. For intervention purposes, a more specific indication would perhaps be more beneficial. As
The utilisation of the DRS-II in this study was also a limitation, and further research with the DRS-II is proposed. To date, no published research referencing the validation of the DRS-II on a South African sample could be found by the researcher; consequently, numerous aspects were taken into consideration before the inclusion thereof. The DRS-II has been validated on other international military samples (Delahaij et al.,
Following from the results derived from two arms of services from the SANDF (SAN and SA Army), psychometric properties should be further investigated on samples from the other arms of services (South African Military Health Service and South African Air Force) for potential utilisation of the BSRS across the broader SANDF.
The findings of the study provided preliminary confirmatory evidence for the application of the BSRS as a resilience screening tool in the SA Army and support the application of the BSRS as a tool to screen and stream individuals (Van Wijk & Martin,
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
All authors contributed equally to this work through design and implementation of the research, as well as the preparation of the manuscript.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
The data supporting the findings of this study is from a South African National Defence Force sample and therefore not available.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors.